Just what was Nigel Farage thinking when he wore his Bayeux tapestry tie? What point do your pupils think he was trying to get over? See how their thinking matures in the new KS3 enquiry lesson on the puzzle of Nigel Farage’s tie. This new lesson makes a significant contribution to the idea of Britishness [...]

One of the ‘harder to teach aspects of the KS3 curriculum often put teachers off from teaching it. We need help that goes beyond the textbooks. So we have devised a new enquiry : Bought and sold for English gold? What were the real reasons why the Act was signed? Starting with a stimulating PowerPoint presentation, [...]

Great new enquiry lesson where pupils are given a clear introduction to the survey and then 4 conflicting explanations as to why it was carried out. Pupils have to work collaboratively, in small Time Teams, and against the clock to find evidence to support each hypothesis before coming to their own conclusion. They then compete [...]

Area 6 Thematic study from before 1066 for the new 2014 KS3 history curriculum

I have been busy creating some more imaginative approaches to the pre-1066 unit that gives pupils’ a stronger chronological perspective. This is the first called Don’t be fooled.
Example A
This study entitled Don’t be fooled! Has been designed to be taught at [...]

Amidst the brouhaha that accompanied leaks of Gove’s eagerly anticipated-for which read ‘dreaded’-announcement of the new draft plan for the National Curriculum history came some ill-informed debate on whether Mary Seacole should be included. She appeared in the list of possible famous people to be studied by KS1. A large number of schools have never [...]

The Framework for the National Curriculum
As you may already have read, the report from the Expert Panel was published a week before Christmas. About as indigestible as the worst Christmas pudding, the report deals only with broad issues of structure. As always the devil is in the detail, but there are some interesting points raised. [...]

Tristan Hunt is one of the few people to put his finger on the problem of Keystage 3 history. In a recent Observer article, he argued that ‘Key stage 3 of the national curriculum allows for a perfectly decent chronological history of Great Britain. The problem is that teachers aren’t allowed to teach it. In [...]

For those of you considering ways of extending your thematic teaching of KS3 history, you might like to consider a few approaches that will soon be added to www.keystagehistory.co.uk Power of the People provides an excellent example. Using a series of ‘ case studies’ taken from different periods in the [...]